By Kgabo Legodi
Youth Capital Community Facilitator, Limpopo
When people in the city talk about rural youth unemployment, they talk about data, skills and CVs; Where I come from, we talk about transport, distance and the lack of information.
In Moletjie, to get to the nearest Youth Centre you need R50 return by taxi, and that is if the taxi comes. Most young people I work with don’t have R50. So even if there is a learnership advertised in Polokwane, it might as well be in Johannesburg because it’s that far. In Moletjie, and worse in other villages, the roads are bad when it rains, and there is little to no network. You can have a smartphone, but if there is no signal, you have zero access to opportunity.
We always say youth must apply online. But how?
We had an engaging film screening and invited various stakeholders to speak to young people. The stakeholders asked them how many of them have an email address. Only three raised their hands. Two of them said they had forgotten their password. Yet all of them had Facebook. None had ever used LinkedIn or SAYouth.mobi because they said it eats data and the pages don’t load. We ended up creating email addresses together on my phone, sharing one hotspot. That one small step felt like advocacy. That is the reality of inaccessibility.
The other reality is information — or the lack of it
Opportunities don’t come to the village. They stay in town. In Moletjie, if you are not in the right WhatsApp group, you won’t know about the interviews or youth-related opportunities. The national numbers tell you how many young people are out of work. They don’t tell you that some of them never heard the opportunity existed.
Fixing rural youth unemployment is not about building a big centre
It is about bringing the centre to the people. Under a tree in Ga-Mokgokong Village, with 15 young people, we can do more than a workshop in town with PowerPoint. If government and decision-makers really want to reach us, they must invest in the people who are already here. Give them data, give them transport fare, give them access to printing. Let us translate opportunities into Sepedi. Let us create safe spaces. Let young women from Moletjie travel safely to and from work after dark.
Opportunity should not be dependent on where you are born, where you live or where you are from. Rural youth unemployment is not a story about ambition — young people here have plenty. They just need the pathways to land.
Kgabo Legodi is a Youth Capital Community Facilitator based in Limpopo, from Ga-Mokgokong, Mankweng and Moletjie, outside Polokwane.
Want to talk to us about this piece, or about Youth Capital’s work in rural communities? Contact Sibabalwe Nobandla on siba@youthcapital.co.za or 079 654 5387.